


Finding Family

by boleynhowards



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23921158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boleynhowards/pseuds/boleynhowards
Summary: A newly reincarnated Jane Seymour is certain of one thing: she wants to be with her family and as far away from the other five queens as possible.(Or, the author wants to give Jane some new representation in the queendom.)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 108





	Finding Family

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for harsh mentions of sexual assault.

Amongst all the confusion of being reincarnated into a brand new millennium, Jane Seymour was certain of one thing; she hated the twenty-first century. Waking up in this new age was something challenging, what with being slapped in the face with a whole new society. Politics, roles and community were completely turned upside down, making almost everything unfamiliar. There was a democracy, free speech and a more Parliamentary styled ruling system instead of a kingdom simply dominated by the king, and that was just for starters. These were all steps forward, all drastic reformation of the government she knew, yet Jane was still daunted just by how much the world had changed in a short five hundred years.

If that wasn’t enough, the introduction of unreal devices, known under the umbrella term ‘technology’, was even more to make the whole world feel alien to Jane. Small blocks of metal she had learnt were called ‘phones’ could be used in favour of the regular ink and parchment to connect with people all over the world in seconds. They could take a picture in an even shorter amount of time, a great upgrade from the timely portraits she was used to. There were even games installed in the tiny slab which, though she hated to admit it, Jane did find slightly entertaining. The phones weren’t all of it though. There was a whole network of similar devices, all with different purposes and controls and buttons and screens. Such a vast variety was overwhelming for the queen, even if the devices were beneficial. She just yearned for something simpler.

Above it all though, it wasn’t technology or the huge shift society had made that was causing her the most stress. Rather it was the loss of her family; the absence of Edward and Henry was much too big to just get over so quickly; her son particularly. Feeling without guidance now her husband was gone and without purpose without her son, Jane could only hope for them both to return. After all, she could get through this perplexing new age if she had them both with her, even if everything else was confusing. They were what she had committed her life to. How could she live up to her motto, ‘bound to obey and serve’, when she had no Henry to do that for anymore? Even if he was pushy and fiery and frankly scary most of the time, Jane still loved him. She had to love him. Then her sweet son; the baby boy Edward, who she barely got to hold and sing a mother’s lullaby to before her life was taken away. How could she just simply continue on with the knowledge of her son without ever meeting him, with her only memories of him being plagued by her postnatal sickness?

The simple answer was that she couldn’t. The two most important people in her life were suddenly gone, and Jane couldn’t get over that. She knew she could adapt to a new set of rules and she knew that she could eventually learn the ins and outs of the internet and social media. What she couldn’t do was continue on with this void in her heart. Knowing that she should have her son in her arms or her hand in her husband’s was enough to disconnect Jane from her current reality. Never feeling so alone, she would have given anything to return to the jaws of death.

Except she wasn’t really alone. No, five other women had all woken up in a very similar state to her. That should have been some source for comfort, but, just to Jane’s luck, the situation had to get increasingly worse. Why? Well, the five others who had woken up with her turned out to be none other than the five other wives of her husband.

Of course, Jane had known about the two before her. Catherine of Aragon; the divorcee who she had pitied greatly in the first life and Anne Boleyn; the beheaded queen whose death she had actually played a role in. Whilst her relationship with the former was civil enough, the tensions she shared with Anne were just another problem to add to her ever-expanding list of turmoil.

Then there were the three who came after her. It made Jane feel uneasy to know that there were three more, especially after being hailed as Henry’s fondest affection; his one and only and the apple of his eye. Then again, Jane figured she shouldn’t be so selfish; it was Henry’s right as king to have his needs met - and she ultimately was just his wife who had died. Her replacement was understandable after her failure to survive her sickness. At least, that’s what Jane told herself every time she thought about it as some sort of consolation for her displeasure. Regardless of her feelings though, she supposed never knowing her three successors was better than acquainting them in the first life because all sorts of tensions to accompany the ones she already had with Boleyn were potential if she did.

The six queens had decided that whilst they adjusted to new life, it was best to stay in a pack for at least a few weeks before all branching off in different directions. That led them to a townhouse in the middle of London, all living under the same roof and each queen figuring herself and the world out more and more as the days went by.

With these new living arrangements, some of the queens had, whether purposefully or not, grown closer to one another. Perhaps the most obvious case of this was of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, the two who had been attached at the hip almost since the beginning. After thinking about it, Jane could pin it down to two things. Either some sort of twisted kinship considering their grisly fates or, what seemed more reasonable, the family connection they shared. They were cousins, after all. She was craving her own blood during these times, and she knew that if her loved ones were there, she would never leave their side either. Those cousins didn’t realise just how lucky they were.

Still, regardless of their luck, Jane herself had no one. Neither did the other queens frankly, but, as selfish as it sounded, they weren’t worth her worry. No, all her thoughts were with Henry and especially Edward. Constantly she wondered what was happening to them wherever they were, hope slipping away with each passing day they didn’t come back to her.

But even if they weren’t there in the flesh, they were still all Jane had. Because of this, in the beginning, Jane had no intention of getting close to her fellow queens. She didn’t quite know what her plan moving forward would be, but she knew wanted to be as far away as possible from everyone else her husband once called a wife. Maybe, if she ventured far enough, she could find her family. She really hoped so.

Though those aspirations would have to wait. For now, she was stuck in the shared house for however long it took for her to adapt to the new world. As soon as she was ready for it, Jane would begin her search for her real family. In the meantime, Jane was just going to have to cope with the presence of five other queens she wanted nothing to do with.

Being hostile wasn’t really something she had originally planned, but when her thoughts were constantly grieving over her lost family, Jane did have her moments where she snapped. Maybe it was one of the other queens being too loud and pulling her out from inside her mind, or maybe she was just jealous of how close people were getting. Yet, even if it wasn’t her intention, hostility seemed to be the way to go to get herself avoided by the other queens, which was really what she wanted. She did that successfully for a little while until one queen caught her eye. The fifth queen, Katherine Howard. 

There was just something about her that Jane couldn’t quite pin down. Whatever it was stirred some sort of instinct in Jane - one that was hard to ignore. Perhaps it was the cautious way Katherine seemed to evaluate everything around her or the lighthearted smiles at her cousin’s behaviour that Jane caught from the corner of her eye. Maybe it was her gargantuan curiosity (Jane had often found her with her nose buried in a history book) or it could have been the gentle youthfulness that seemed to follow her whether she went. Or, possibly, it was the brokenness Jane could see so clearly, even if the fifth queen was trying to hide it behind lopsided grins and neck chokers. Some part of her was just digging at Jane to dote on the girl, to treat her like her own, to produce a real smile. Natural instinct, Jane pinned it to. It was just normal for her to want to help a girl a lot younger than her.

Still, though, Jane needed to satisfy this feeling of instinct. With curiosity about the history she missed added to the mix, Jane found herself for the first time beginning to research the past. She had finally figured out how to use the ‘Safari’ app on her phone and began to type her first ever search, ‘Katherine Howard’.

The results she received were not what she expected. Dreary black text against a bright white background, yet Jane hung onto every word. Each one made her feel even more as she read on.

‘ _ He was forty-nine and she was still a teenager… beheaded three months later on the grounds of treason… steadfastly denied any precontract, maintaining that Dereham had raped her… believed to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block… died with relative composure but looked pale and terrified… beheaded with a single stroke of the executioner's axe… buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel.’ _

Suddenly the entire way Jane viewed history was skewed. She had been so sure of Henry up until this point, so trusting of the man that had pulled her up to the greatest heights of the world. But these statements, backed up by evidence, changed everything. Now Jane just felt numb. Crushed by the fact that she had been defending him in her mind for so long, ashamed of her hopes that he would one day return to her.

Briefly, Jane pondered on her own relationship with Henry. She wondered if she should have spotted the signs of what he would become, thinking back on how aggressive he was when handling her and how domineeringly he behaved. It was true that she had always noticed that about him, but her whole lifetime she had been told that was because he was king. His behaviour toward her was to be expected and tolerated. Jane could swallow that if it was happening to just her, but no matter how many times she read the words on her screen over and over, she couldn’t stomach these horrors happening to someone she knew. Maybe, though it was a scary possibility to face, she had been wishing for the wrong thing all along.

And these were just the facts. When she left that webpage and searched for more information, Jane was disgusted by what she found. Debates, arguments, conclusions. A whole collection of articles written by entitled people who thought their opinion was the truth - and, most of the time, they liked to use words like ‘vixen’ and ‘seductress’ to describe the queen.

They were wrong. Sure, Jane hadn’t really interacted that much with the fifth queen, but she had observed her well enough to know that the statements were false. Living under her roof, fast asleep in the room next door to her in fact, was no woman who asked for it. Amongst all the confusion of this new information, that was one thing Jane could be certain of; she had seen it with her own eyes.

By the end of the incredulous study, Jane had only fuelled the desire to care for Katherine even more rather than quell it, which was her original intent. Still, she needed to find out more. Not just about Katherine; about everything. After learning the story of just one of the queens, Jane needed more information to piece together what she had learnt, to clear the picture of the past she had yet to dust over and to solve the indisputable dread in her heart.

Staying up until the sun began to peek over the city skyline, Jane poured over her phone. Every piece of new information began to feed into her own greater conclusion, one that differed greatly from the ones she had read from the historians. She knew it was probably wrong to overstep like this into the other queens’ stories, especially without consulting them first, but she was propelled forward by each new fact she learnt.

Once she had finished reading through the lives of the other five queens she lived with, Jane was left with a completely new mindset. Her doubts about Henry that had been ignited by her search on the fifth queen had only trebled now that she had read in-depth about the treatment of the other five queens. And then she found an article theorising about herself.

One that concluded she was a pawn. That she might have been the only one he “truly loved” but what was that really? Could love be defined as love when in reality it was obedience in the name of safety? Would his love have remained if she had not given him a son? It seemed unlikely, given the cases of his previous two wives. Had Jane forced herself to love this man, told herself that he was all she had, all just to cope with her harsh reality? That’s what the article suggested about her - and the eerie accuracy was daunting to the third queen.

Shaken up by everything she had just read, new ideologies began to run around Jane’s mind. They roamed free, unkempt by the controlling voice of a man, which let them blossom into free thoughts and self ideals. Resentment towards Henry, something that Jane had purposefully buried deep inside of her, finally began to creep back up now its chains were broken. A plaster obscuring the truth had been ripped away, and now the light it revealed was burgeoning the flowers of Jane’s own intellect - her own freedom of thinking and opinions.

Though it was an unsettling thought and something she would have to take some getting used to, Jane had come to one conclusion. As the sun broke through the gap of her curtains and the golden light of dawn danced around the room, dispelling the shadows, a similar sequence happened in the revelations of her mind. Maybe she wasn’t right about Henry after all.

It was confusing to define exactly what toll that took on her. On one hand, her loneliness doubled considering she had essentially lost a member of the family. On the other, all her thoughts focused on one person who could never lose her affections; her son. A void was still present, just now yearning only for Edward.

That wasn’t the only shift in her conscience though, for the void was accompanied by the desire she had to care. Her previous goal of breaking away from the other queens as soon as possible was demolished with her new discoveries following her late night study, which left her stationary at the house and boundless in ambition, searching for something new.

These all seemed to be the perfect combination. A missing son and a desire to care for the queens whose gruesome stories she had read surely could only lead to one obvious solution: to take on that caring role.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. Even if she wanted to, Jane couldn’t just slide into that position. She had distanced herself from the other queens by this point, her head so full of things she now knew were falsehoods that she could only scold herself for starting this. Ironically, her efforts to reunite with her family had only ended up in her becoming even more alone.

What was more was that she didn’t know if she could morally act maternally towards another. Her thoughts were with Edward as she pieced this out, wondering if he would see it as an act of betrayal. She pondered if he would think she was replacing him, which was something she would never be able to bring herself to do.

So, solemnly, Jane swallowed her desires to become a mothering figure towards any of the other five queens. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it, not with all these doubtful thoughts spiralling her mind.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to reform her behaviour a little bit though. Jane became more patient with the other queens, less angered by their antics and, hopefully, more likeable. It seemed that her altered behaviour was noticeable because slowly but surely the queens felt an alleviation in the atmosphere when Jane was around and, though they were unsure what caused it, they were grateful for it nonetheless. Even with this shift though, this easing into becoming integrated into the group, Jane still couldn’t bring herself to act the way she had been so strongly drawn to the very first time she read those articles.

Until screams ripped through the house during the dead of night. Screaming wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, actually. There were plenty of nights that Jane woke up to the sounds of queens trapped in a nightmare, past trauma making even their dreams an inescapable domain of terror.

What was uncommon was for the screams to last this long. Jane could track where they were from easily. The room next to her; the one belonging to Katherine Howard, the queen who had unknowingly started Jane’s thirst for knowledge and thus triggered her shift in behaviour. Usually, by this point, Anne had run into the room and was in the process of calming her down.

Only she hadn’t yet. Jane had no idea why she wasn’t coming, why tonight her sleep was so heavy, but she couldn’t just lay down and wait. Not with the prospect of the younger queen in trouble weighing heavily in heart and the cruel truths she had read previously spiralling viciously around her mind. Creeping out the bed, Jane tiptoed to the bedroom on the right and opened it.

She was greeted by the sight of Katherine thrashing against an invisible opponent in her bed. Jane’s heart sunk, only imagining what sort of demons were materialised in front of her at the moment. One obvious task reigned high though; she had to wake her up.

“Katherine…” Jane nervously called as she approached the bedside.

No response, so she repeated the name again. With a second lack of response, Jane was about to try and shake the girl awake until she decided the better of it - touching her during a moment like this was probably not the best way to go. She gave calling another shot. One more firm, “Katherine!”

And the younger queen’s eyes shot open. First, she scrambled up, eyes wide as she took deep and rushed breaths. It took a few seconds for her to readjust to her room and recognise she was dreaming, but as soon as she did her eyes travelled to the person at the bedside.

Then she just looked confused. Without a word, she lingered uncertainly in place. It was Jane and she had no idea how to react. Whilst the third queen had done nothing remotely wrong to her personally, she was a difficult character to predict. Katherine didn’t know if she was there for good or for bad, what with her difficult behaviour yet her slow redemption. Luckily, her thoughts were answered.

“I’m not here to hurt you.” Jane whispered so as not to be startling. She was surprised by the softness in her tone, how reassuring she sounded. Deep down, she felt guilty for Katherine’s confused reaction. Though she had been improving herself, she hadn’t been the best person to be around - and right now it showed deeply in how the fifth queen tried to act.

“I’m sorry.” She finally mumbled, looking in Jane’s direction but refusing to meet her eye. Her tone was flat and broken, and for once there was no artificial smile or fake demeanor to hide how destroyed she was. Jane’s heart could only ache at the fact that she felt the need to apologise for hurting.

“You don’t need to apologise, Kat.” That was the nickname she had heard Anne and the others using, yes? “It’s okay to be scared after everything that happened. It would be a little weird if you weren’t actually.”

“Then sorry for waking you up?” Kat tried to argue, but Jane wasn’t hearing it.

“I don’t care that you woke me up.” She told Kat simply, “I would rather be awake here with you to help than be asleep, leaving you to hurt. I’ll stay here all night if I need to, just so you’re not alone.”

The fifth queen seemed stunned by her words, and Jane couldn’t decide whether it was because she wasn’t used to people being there for her or because she wasn’t used to _Jane_ being there for her. Neither of the options were ideal, but they only made Jane more determined to be prominently reliable.

And she acted on that determination. The night ended with Jane cautiously climbing into the bed next to Kat and sleeping there instead of her own room. From there, it skyrocketed. Her presence in the time of need was something Kat was extremely thankful for, no matter how much Jane insisted she didn’t need to be.

Jane continued to be there for Kat during those tough times and it was quick for her to become an anchor for the fifth queen. Oftentimes before bed, Jane would hear a knocking on her door and be greeted by the fifth queen asking to sleep in her room, spare pillow in hand. The mornings after, Jane liked to wake up a little early and prepare breakfast not only for herself and Kat but for the other queens too - taking extra care when fixing up that one mug of hot chocolate.

Every situation helped Jane feel a little more whole again. The day she spent with Kat throwing frozen peas into a lake of ducks to feed, the evening she spent massaging pink dye into the girl’s hair for the first time, the movie nights spent with a bowl of popcorn between them both and so much more - the situations so peacefully culminated in a way that Jane didn’t expect them to.

Everyone had noticed that Jane was a big helper for Kat, but no one seemed to see how the latter had the same effect on the former. Slowly but surely, Jane felt the void inside her shrink. It was still there, and never it would leave, but it finally became manageable. She could finally think of something else other than her old life and family. Jane finally felt like she had a purpose.

What was more was that her relationship with Kat was a gateway to extend into strong relationships with the other queens too. Everyone could recognise the maternal way in which Jane cared for Kat, and they could see how healing it was for her. Civility turned to friendship, and soon enough Jane found herself bonding with everyone. She even managed to form new beginnings with her predecessor, Anne Boleyn, who previously wanted nothing to do with her.

With everyone now seemingly being united spare a few differences, a group activity was finally held for the first time. It was a movie night, and, though it had taken a while to agree on something everyone wanted to watch, the queens sprawled about their sitting room and around the TV.

Catherine Parr and Anna of Cleves took the two-seater whilst Catherine of Aragon lazed over the armchair. On the three-seater sat Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard and Jane Seymour. Kat was in the middle of the two, her head leaning drowsily on Anne’s shoulder whilst Jane wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

By the time they were about twenty minutes into the second movie, Jane was sure that the queen in the middle was fast asleep based on the rhythmed breaths she made and the relaxation of her posture in Jane’s arms. She took the moment to tune out of the movie they were watching and reflect.

She had faced a lot since waking up that one fateful day. Her whole perception of the world and history had turned around, flipping the switch on everything about her. Her attitude, her behaviour - everything was a complete turnaround to how she used to present herself.

Yet she was happy about it. Happy because she had found herself and learnt the truths against the lies. She had put what was wrong behind her and begun to surround herself with what was right for her. A family unit - just what she had always craved since the very beginning.

And whilst Edward would always be in her heart, she had a second family now. A family who were right there with her at that moment in time, eyes joyfully focused on the screen as the main character navigated her own self discovery story. 

That didn’t mean she was replacing him or betraying him - another lesson she had learnt recently. She was just expanding her family, and she knew deep down that, wherever he was, Edward would approve. He would adore his older sisters Kat and Anne and cherish his aunts, Catherine Parr, Catherine of Aragon and Anna of Cleves. She was in a new and healthy unit whilst savouring the best parts of her old one, and that was all the consolation Jane Seymour ever really did need in the end.


End file.
